The Last Conquistador: Juan de Onate and the Settling of the Far Southwest

This book chronicles the life and frontier career of Don Juan de Ote, the first colonizer of the old Spanish Borderlands. Born in Zacatecas, Mexico, in the mid-sixteenth century, Don Juan was the prominent son of an aristocratic silver-mining family. In 1598, in his late forties, Ote led a formidable expedition of settlers, with wagons and livestock, on an epic march northward to the upper Rio Grade Valley of New Mexico. There he established the first European settlement west of the Mississippi, launching a significant chapter in early American history. In his activities he displayed qualities typical of Spain’s sixteenth-century men of action; in his career we find a summation of the motives, aspirations, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses of the Hispanic pioneers who settled the Borderlands. Marc Simmons holds the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of New Mexico. His publications include more than one hundred articles and nearly two dozen books on the American Southwest, several of them award winners.

Author: Marc Simmons
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 06/15/1991
Series: Oklahoma Western Biographies #2
Pages: 224
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.50w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780806123684
Language: English